Chapter IV. Sketch of the History of Normandy During the Tenth Century

The two foreign conquests of England which form the main subject of English history during the eleventh century were the work of nations which came originally of the same stock. First came the Danes themselves; |Normans and English originally kinsmen.| then came the Normans, the descendants of Danish or other Scandinavian settlers in Gaul. In mere blood therefore the Normans were allied in different degrees to all the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain, and they were very closely allied to the descendants of the Danish settlers in the North and East of England. And there can be little doubt that this original community of blood really had an important practical effect, and that the speedy fusion of Normans and English was greatly promoted by the fact that conquerors and conquered were in truth kinsmen. |Practical, but unrecognized, effects of this kindred.| But this influence was a purely silent one, and it was in no way acknowledged by those on whom it acted. Neither side thought at all of any kindred as existing between them. And to all appearance, no two nations of Western Europe could have been found which, in speech, feelings, |The Danes in England become Englishmen.| and manners, differed more widely from one another. The Danes who settled in England had been easily turned into Englishmen. Though the likeness of speech and institutions between the two nations has often been exaggerated, it was something not only real but palpable. It needed no historical research to find it out; it was something which men of both nations could feel for themselves. Among the earlier Teutonic settlers in Britain, we can well believe that there were some whose original kindred with the Teutons of Scandinavia was quite as close as their original kindred with some of their fellow Teutons in Britain. Anyhow, the languages of the two nations were closely allied; their institutions were very similar, those of England being doubtless the more advanced and regularly organized of the two. Religion formed the main difference between them; but the Danes in England soon adopted the Christian faith, and they were followed, after no very great interval, by their brethren in Denmark. Thus the Danish settler in England, when once baptized, readily became an Englishman, differing from the Angle or the Saxon only as the Angle and the Saxon differed from one another. This absorption into a kindred nation is less remarkable than the fact that the same people in another land adopted, with not much greater difficulty, a language and culture which was wholly alien to them. |The Danes in Gaul become Frenchmen.| For, as the Danes who settled in England became Englishmen, so the Danes who settled in Gaul equally became Frenchmen. The Normans of the eleventh century were men of Scandinavian descent who had cast away every outward trace of the language, manners, and feelings which made them kindred to Englishmen, and had adopted instead the language, manners, and feelings of Latin France. Before they landed in England, they had become Frenchmen; though still proud of the Norman name, they were content, as speakers of the French tongue, to call themselves Frenchmen in distinction from the Teutonic English. No doubt the old Scandinavian element was still at work within them; it made them Frenchmen on a far nobler and grander scale than other Frenchmen, and it enabled them, when they had once settled in England, unconsciously but surely to become Englishmen. Still, when they followed their Duke to the conquest of England, they were in every outward respect no longer Scandinavians but Frenchmen. In a word, they were no longer Northmen but Normans; the change in the form of the name aptly sets forth the change in those who bore it.